Cancel culture is coming for Christianity

How awake are British Christians to the threat to their freedom of speech and assembly from the virus of cancel culture?

One of its latest victims is a politically incorrect Pentecostal organisation called Destiny Church. Destiny had planned to hold a three-day conference in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall in June. But shortly before the coronavirus lockdown, Edinburgh Council, which owns the venue, cancelled the event. It cited the views of one of the advertised speakers, US preacher Larry Stockstill. Stocksill has said that homosexual behaviour is ‘not accepted by God’.

One imagines that most readers of spiked would not agree with the spiritual worldview which lies behind Mr Stockhill’s outlook on homosexuality. But it is nevertheless important to defend his right to speak and Destiny Church’s right to hold its events.

Destiny is now taking legal action against Edinburgh council over the cancellation. It is backed by the Evangelical campaign group, the Christian Institute. The Christian Institute has been valiantly campaigning for Christians’ freedom of speech since the turn of the millennium when New Labour started working to outlaw hate speech and ‘phobias’ of various kinds – such as homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia. Christian beliefs are often penalised by these laws.

But for some reason, a great number of British Christians – particularly in the older Protestant denominations such as the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church – have been asleep to this threat to their free speech. Worse still, some Church of England bishops have even cheered on the banning of Christian preachers. For instance, earlier this year, the bishops of Liverpool and Sheffield publicly supported LGBT campaigners who successfully persuaded various venues around the UK to cancel bookings by US evangelist Franklin Graham because he believes that the Bible forbids homosexual practice.

In recent years, Christians have been sacked from their jobs, thrown off university courses, and even arrested for stating the traditional teaching of the Church on sexual morality. I have been covering these issues for some time and am not aware of any occasion in which the current archbishops of Canterbury or York have publicly supported a Christian facing any of these predicaments.

The Church of England hierarchy is either passive towards cancel culture or is actively fanning its flames. One possible explanation for this is that the Church of England is a deeply divided house and has been for years. Three very different groups of worshippers have been clustering together in its institutional big tent since the 19th century – Liberals, Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals. The current divisions over sexual morality and the role of women in the leadership of the Church are the symptoms of historic differences between these three spiritual movements within Anglicanism. But in order for the institutional show to stay on the road, the divisions have to be papered over with talk of ‘walking together in unity’ and ‘good disagreement’. Straight talking at CofE gatherings threatens the institutional peace.

Of course, at General Synod, the Church’s parliament, it is procedurally impossible to stop elected members, such as church volunteers, from speaking their minds. And they often do. But when certain evangelicals with countercultural views get up to speak or ask a question, the discomfort on the faces and in the body language of officials is often visible. That desperate desire to keep their own divided house from falling down may explain why the politically correct threat to free speech in Britain is not on the list of social concerns among CofE bishops.

But apathy about cancel culture is very damaging to the Christian cause. Christianity is supposed to be spread by persuasion. If people are to become Christians, they have to be persuaded of the truth that the crucified and risen Jesus Christ is the divine saviour of the world from sin and its consequence – which, according to the Bible, is eternal death. As the Apostle Paul summarised the Christian message in his letter to the Romans in the New Testament: ‘For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ How can people be persuaded of this wonderful message of salvation if the persuaders are not allowed to speak freely and publicly?

So here we are – 10 weeks into Britain’s three-week lockdown. We hope you are all staying sane out there, and that spiked has been of some assistance in that. We have ramped up our output of late, to provide a challenge to the Covid consensus. But we couldn’t have done that without your support. spiked – unlike so many things these days – is completely free. We rely on our loyal readers to fund our journalism. So if you enjoy our work, please do consider becoming a regular donor. Even £5 per month can be a huge help. You can donate here.Thank you! And stay well.

Gareth Edward KING

8th April 2020 at 3:47 pm

Re. Matt Long. Very Les Dawson your sense of humour. I expect you’re too young to know who he was. Look him up. I’m sure your ‘auntie’ would love him and would’ve probably heard of him in any case. She’s probably got one of those hand-bags that were so typical of those 1970s Dawson sketches.

popij pij2

7th April 2020 at 5:08 pm

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Sue Ward

7th April 2020 at 4:04 pm

Cancel culture is going to be the least of the Church of England’s problems. The failure of the bishops to allow churches to remain open or even live stream services (at Easter of all times!) has completely pulled the rug out from under the clergy attempting to provide pastoral care to their elderly, isolated and frightened flock during turn pandemic. My own 90yo dad is a devout Anglican who has worked tirelessly as a layperson for the church for decades. He lives in sheltered housing and his Sunday visit to church (where social distancing would not be a problem) was one of his few pleasures. Now banned from even live streaming the Holy Week services, his vicar has sent round a memo telling parishioners how to conduct there own lonely services. Dad feels utterly abandoned. His generation will be gone soon enough – whether from covid or time – and I cannot imagine who the CofE thinks will replace them. Not me, that’s for sure.

David Webb

7th April 2020 at 3:10 pm

Amazing how even this article had to say only that the US preacher for some reason believed that the Bible condemns homosexuality. I’m afraid this is not up for disputation. The Bible roundly condemns it, with the death penalty being advocated in the Old Testament and hellfire in the New Testament. People who don’t believe that should go and do something else and stop pretending to be Christians.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

7th April 2020 at 8:49 pm

And yet, Jesus Christ died for sinners, not the righteous.

Zammo McTrotsky

10th April 2020 at 8:35 pm

Well, David, it’s for the same reason that people who allow their hair to become unkempt or tear their clothes in defiance of Lev 10:6 still call themselves Christians. despite the fact that that injunction too is in the Bible, (this is also not up for disputation) and they risk both a smiting and the provocation of God’s somewhat unreasonable anger towards people who had nothing to do with said offence.
It is a strange idea that only the most fanatical of Christians and the most moronic of atheists believe, that to call oneself a Christian (and I don’t, by the way, ) one must believe in every verse of the Bible.

Zammo McTrotsky

10th April 2020 at 8:41 pm

Well, David, it’s for the same reason that people who allow their hair to become unkempt or tear their clothes in defiance of Lev 10:6 still call themselves Christians. despite the fact that that injunction too is in the Bible, (this is also not up for disputation) and they risk both a smiting and the provocation of God’s somewhat unreasonable anger towards people who had nothing to do with said offence.
It is a strange belief that only the most boneheaded of Christians and the most moronic of atheists hold, that to call oneself a Christian (and I don’t, by the way, ) one must literally believe in every verse of the Bible. It is also, given the age of some of the books of the Bible, a recent one, and not commonly believed by Christians or similarly for the OT, by Jews, for most of their history

zonia sawyer

7th April 2020 at 2:24 pm

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Alexander Allan

7th April 2020 at 2:01 pm

Most people who call themselves Christian, only see Christianity and as social organisation to do charitable works and get a psychological therapeutic boost, which is why few preachers talk about hell and damnation; it triggers their congregation who just want a feel good injection of mercy and love. Most have no supernatural faith. As a result they have been consumed by the culture around then and have accommodated it their beliefs. As a result they do not care about cancel culture because they agree with what is getting cancelled. Christian who still adhere to the perennial teaching of the faith are aware and also aware that a new persecution is coming.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

7th April 2020 at 11:52 am

S pi ked wants to moderate my quotation from the New Testament (Romans 1) before it is published. It appears that even S p ike d is engaged in censoring Christians! I hope they apply the same policy equitably to that vicious book of fabrications the Qu’ ran.

Alicia Portland- Sinclair

7th April 2020 at 2:07 pm

Loads of good comments here, and appreciate Spiked and its independence, even if Biblical Scholarship might lag some way behind Das Kapital by way of holy writ.
No point giving the scriptural basis of what we see happening. Jesus, as well as the Hebrew prophets and wisdom writers really are for those with eyes to see, ears to hear.
G-d is in the business of improving or removing the franchise of ” Christian” from vast tracts of public life. As ” the Church” is ashamed of Him and His Boy? So, Jesus in turn will deal with them, expeditiously and terminally as He says. Only He taught on Hell and Judgement, but Peter says that judgement starts with the Church, the ” people of God”( 1 Pet 4.17).
Jesus is Jewish, and is better honoured by Islam than Christianity as we know it today.
Still, Ramadan is coming, bet the lockdown won’t be enforced on April 28th.
Hijab at the ready, just a longer face mask than I’m used to.
Ps 53, esp v4…..

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

7th April 2020 at 4:32 pm

Utter nonsense. The Qu’ran explicitly rejects the divinity of Christ and says that he was not even crucified. The fundamentals of Christianity and Islam cannot be reconciled.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

7th April 2020 at 11:50 am

Romans 1 does clearly condemn homos exual acts:
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lu sts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lus t for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
However, later in the same chapter it says:
They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.
Why then do so-called evangelicals obsess about the im mo rality of hom ose xual acts but say nothing about envy, murder, deceit, etc. Do they think that these things are lesser sins? You will be sent to hell just as readily for slander or envy as for having s ex with someone of the same s e x. Why this arbitrary selective interpretation of New Testament teaching? It smacks of hypocrisy. In any case, heterosexual fo rnicati o n is far more widespread and destructive.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

7th April 2020 at 11:38 am

What about the utter hypocrisy of so-called ‘evangelicals’ obsessing about homosexuality and saying nothing about the far more real and present danger posed by the growth of Islam in this country? I have never heard a prominent evangelical leader say anything against the Islamic religion in public. It seems that these so-called evangelicals are highly selective in their targets. They condemn the immorality of LGBT people (a tiny minority of the population) and yet never stand up and denounce Islam, calling for its expulsion from Europe. We can only conclude that most evangelicals are cowards and not willing to suffer and die for their faith as they are called to do in the New Testament. The so-called ‘Christian Institute’, whose sole purpose appears to be attacking homosexuals, is one of the worst offenders in this regard. So sad to see these pseudo-evangelicals preach Victorian morality and the Law instead of the Gospel of redemption and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

SOLI DEO GLORIA

Matt Long

7th April 2020 at 10:50 am

And we can stop using the word “woke” everywhere, everyone?

Time to give the meaningless term a rest.

A 50 year old English man who in 1993 objected to his sister’s preaching about “the evils of homosexuality’ did so of his own violation and not because he’d been to London to sign up to The Woke.

Centuries before lazy idiots had started dropping the word “Woke’ into their articles and online comments, humans cared and argued and fought for change and had strong opinions such as a man in 1993 telling his Christian sister: “you either give it a rest with your nasty bile about gays or you’re not coming here for Christmas. You ruin the atmosphere and you upset mum with your bloody nonsense. Ever since you met that Barry you’ve not been the same. He’s turned you into a proper nut case.”

The man’s opinions and point of view need not be dismissed with a snide “How terribly woke”.

Ironically, it is the “Good news Bible” and Jesus’s most well known teachings that might inspire a 13 year old girl at a CofE school to cease bullying her classmate and lead her down a path of “English wokeness’ AKA “being nice and thoughtful”. Inspired by Jesus, and fears of the supernatural, she might decide to dedicate her life to helping others after wining lots of praise from her teachers gir being ‘a lovely, helpful girl”

Denouncing Peter Kaye for being “woke” means nothing at all.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

7th April 2020 at 11:43 am

BON is obsessed with the term ‘woke’. I think it’s just a useful umbrella term for anything he dislikes. The world is complex and doesn’t fall neatly into two camps (the ‘woke’ and the ‘unwoke’).

Garreth Byrne

7th April 2020 at 10:36 am

Freedom of belief is asserted in most democracies. Freedom to express beliefs is often being curtailed on university campuses, on radio and television discussions, and in hired public halls and hotel conference rooms. The canceling culture is no longer insidious, it is blatant.

Matt Long

7th April 2020 at 10:25 am

‘Julian Mann is an evangelical journalist”

Right.

Now what would Julian actually like my auntie to do if I tell her, for example, that Scientologists are finding it difficult to hire the hall in her village to spread their message.

My auntie will not give a toss and will continue focusing on her gardening and home keeping And television interests.

Before Spiked journalists rush to denounce her as a remain voting, Woke, anti-working class liberal elite I should point out my auntie is a working class, O level generation, Brexit voting Mail reader.

She simply doesn’t care if Scientologists are “cancelled” round her way.

Just as she wouldn’t care if some Middle Eastern women flew into Bromley and we’re prevented from promoting their dog skin handbag business by PETA activists from South London.

My auntie will certainly never visit the homes of the owners of any private hall and attack them physically until they agree to hire out their hall to Scientologists “in the name of free speech”.

Some articles on Spiked are very much of the “i’m going go moan about my pet peeve and none of you Spiked readers in England are actually going to do anything at all in response but at least I feel better” kind.

I get that Spiked wants to push contrarian opinion but editing and quality control are a good thing.

The average normal English man and woman in England isn’t about to embark on a decades long crusade to make evangelicals, Scientologists, fortune tellers or homeopaths feel a lot happier.

It is Mann’s mission to ensure children in Maidstone get to hear his supernatural beliefs, not my auntie’s and not mine.

The mundane reality is that if Britney Spears was banned from singing in the school just you the road from my auntie’s house, my auntie will never go to that school and threaten the headmaster until he backs down. My auntie simply doesn’t share the Spiked team’s fetish for free speech.

A typical conversation in our England would go like this, Spiked:

‘They’ve stopped them evangelicals from America preaching in our little library next Wednesday. Do you want to organise a protest against the library?”
‘Not really, no.”

Mor Vir

7th April 2020 at 9:03 am

“from sin and its consequence – which, according to the Bible, is eternal death.”

Oh dear, Julian is himself cancelling the Bible. It teaches that all sinners and non-Christians will burn forever in hell fire. All of the main churches have taught that. If you are going to take out or change all of the teachings that people do not like anyway then it does not really matter whether other people ban you for saying nasty things. You have already cancelled your own religion.

Revelation 20:15
And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Matthew 25:41
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Matthew 5:22
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

Revelation 14:11
And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”

Matthew 13:50
And throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

2 Peter 2:4
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;

Jude 1:7
Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

Revelation 20:14
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.

Mark 9:43-48
And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’

Etc., etc.

Philip Humphrey

7th April 2020 at 10:11 am

Mor Vir “. It teaches that all sinners and non-Christians will burn forever in hell fire. All of the main churches have taught that. ” Wrong on both counts. The 12 apostles were all sinners, Jesus went out and sought some of the worst sinners and made them his followers. He built His Church with them. He didn’t condemn the woman accused of adultery that the pharisees wanted to stone. He welcomed the dying thief on the cross into paradise. Christianity is a religion of forgiveness, of the possibility of salvation for all who genuinely want it.

Mor Vir

7th April 2020 at 10:34 am

Yes that is what I said. Those who die in unrepented “sin” or in unbelief go into the fire.

This is the official RCC teaching given in an “infallible” way in a past century when it was boss of our civilisation.

“The Church firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that all those outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also J ews, heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into ever lasting f ire which was prepared for the d evil and his a ngels” (Matthew), unless before the end of their life they have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the Church is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward; and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has his shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.”

Mike Stallard

7th April 2020 at 8:48 am

I am a Catholic myself, having left my Vicarage way back in 1989. You are so right. In 1989, nobody seemed to believe any more in the resurrection, Jesus’ ministry or the truth of the Gospels, let alone the Old Testament. The authorities simply sneered.
We had nothing to say.
Today they are paying the price with locked churches, an appalling set of ministers, many of them part timers or else “priests in charge”. The women especially are often trivial nothings, grannies making the church into a lovely home – for themselves – or simply bureaucrats obeying instructions instead of obeying the will of their Lord.
Don’t rock the boat!
Which is why in the countryside where I live once thriving churches now stand locked, empty and with no hope of every finding an incumbent.

Philip Humphrey

7th April 2020 at 8:00 am

Most of us ordinary Christians are well aware of the threat. Certainly many of my fellow Catholics are, as well as my evangelical friends. I was alarmed that Franklin Graham was canceled as a result of a campaign by the “wokes”. It seems the latter group and many on the left cannot tolerate Christians believing that some things or lifestyles are sinful or less than ideal for human beings. Even though it is quite explicit in Christian teaching that Christians are expected to love others irrespective of their beliefs or lifestyles and not to discriminate. In Christianity, God is the judge, not them, and He is more merciful and just than we could ever be. Nonetheless, some on the left appear to hold that people should judged not only on what they do and how they behave, but on what they believe. In other words, “thoughtcrime”.

Mor Vir

7th April 2020 at 8:49 am

The Old and New Testaments are full of hatred and death threats against gays. UK had a death sentence for gays, until 1861, like other Christian countries in Europe. It remained illegal here until 1967.

Dominic Straiton

7th April 2020 at 9:03 am

Where in the New testament?. Forgiveness of sin is the central tenet of Christianity. Forgiveness is missing in both Islam and the new woke religion which is why they get on together so well and why both congregations hate Kufar.

Mor Vir

7th April 2020 at 9:14 am

In particularly Romans 1. I posted some passages below but the filter caught them.

1 Timothy 1:10 – For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

Romans 1:26 – For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

Romans 1:27 – And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

Romans 1:32 – Who knowing the judgement of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Mor Vir

7th April 2020 at 9:21 am

In particular Romans 1:26-32, which Christians took to be a death sentence, they “deserve to d ie” for it. I posted some passages but the filter keeps catching them, which is understandable. Various other passages in the NT denounce g ays but that is the one that they really liked to use to get the hangings and burnings going.

Dominic Straiton

7th April 2020 at 9:37 am

Nothing preached by Jesus then.

Mor Vir

7th April 2020 at 10:12 am

The NT teaches that the apostles like Paul et al are teaching the message of Jesus in more detail. “I will send you out to teach my teachings. On this rock I will build my church &c.”

Jesus may have preached forgiveness on a personal level but he does not deny that laws should punish sins. He was not an anarchist but a theocrat. “Give unto Ceasar what is his, give unto God what is his.”

The idea is that Jesus came to establish his “kingdom of God” with his religion and laws. “The kingdom of God is at hand.” Like how the J ews were supposed to enact the laws of God in the OT from Moses. The NT is not a law book like the OT but it does talk about various sins.

The Christian countries tended to focus on the punishment of “heresy” or “apostasy”, anyone who went against the belief and the power of the Church, and various sexual sins like adultery and divorce, which was banned by law. G ays got punished extremely badly because of the death sentence in Romans 1 and Leviticus/ Deuteronomy.

Christians most certainly did understand that to be the religion of Jesus as taught in the Bible.

Matt Long

7th April 2020 at 10:57 am

I assume, Philip, you never spend much time fretting about the fact your family is exposed to so little Sikh teaching?

It has never occurred to you – not once in your life – to get online and opine about the “threats” Sikhs face given the fact they can provide no evidence to back up their beliefs and so are a total irrelevance to most people and the establishment?

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

7th April 2020 at 11:41 am

And yet evangelicals appear to have jettisoned the concept of forgiveness and mercy entirely. Same sex attraction is extremely deep-rooted and cannot merely be turned on or off at will. Any Christians who experience same sex attraction should put their faith in Jesus Christ and not in these flawed human institutions which so often fail to live up to their most basic ideals.

Jonnie Henly

7th April 2020 at 1:44 pm

Evangelicals are far keener on judging people for their beliefs than anyone on the left.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

7th April 2020 at 4:38 pm

True dat but there are evangelicals who are politically on the left. Keir Hardie was a Christian

‘Aged 21, Hardie had noted in his diary: ‘Today I have given my life to Jesus Christ’. He was to remain a reluctant Liberal ally for a decade longer but that conversion experience was what set him on his path towards democratic socialism. A key evangelist in the advance of a very British Christian socialism, Hardie the Christian and socialist merits closer examination in this the centenary of his death.’

Dominic Straiton

7th April 2020 at 6:24 am

Its not really clear what Christ thought of homosexuality. It is very clear what Mohamed thought about it .Which is why it is punishable by death in 11 countries. In Iran men are forced into surgery and made to live as women or face the rope and crane. Isis threw them off buildings. All muslims who follow the Koran would go along with this. So why arnt the mosques being boycotted. Where is stonwall on this issue. Why isnt it being confronted in our woke schools. The left can go fc themselves.

Mike Stallard

7th April 2020 at 9:06 am

“If any two men among you commit indecency, punish them both. If they repent and mend their ways, let them be. God is forgiving and merciful” Qur’an 4.16 Women.
There are, in the Qur’an, 3 other such passages. In addition there is a long discourse (in The Poets) on people who deliberately disbelieve the words of apostles. This is what Lot said: “Will you fornicate with males and abandon your wives, whom God has created for you? Surely you are great transgressors.” 26.166 Sodom was destroyed completely.
At theological college, I was told that Sodom was destroyed not for its homosexuality but because they disobeyed the law of treating strangers with respect.
As for Jesus, he was completely uninterested in sex really. He chatted with a Goy woman at the well of Samaria. He wept over the death of Lazarus. He surrounded himself with companions of both sexes. He allowed himself to be anointed with expensive scent by an admiring woman. He was himself, unlike Mohammed, unmarried. There is no evidence that he had any sex with anyone. But when the woman was actually caught in the act of adultery, he drew in the sand and then told the angry crowd of religious experts to stone her to death – but only if they had no sin themselves.
Jesus is a much deeper character really.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

7th April 2020 at 11:44 am

Homosexual acts are not mentioned once in the four Gospels. They are, however, condemned in Romans 1 as unnatural, as elsewhere in the Old and New Testaments.

Jonnie Henly

7th April 2020 at 1:43 pm

“Why isnt it being confronted in our woke schools.”

Did you miss all the protests in Birmingham last year?

Or are you just a liar?

Pipe down.

David Jones

7th April 2020 at 6:00 am

The author seems to labouring under the misapprehension that the Church of England believes in God,the Bible,or any other form of religious belief.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

7th April 2020 at 11:54 am

The greatest hypocrisy is ‘evangelicals’ such as David Holloway remaining in the CofE thinking that they can reform it, which after hundreds of years of failure is clearly not the case. Any Christian who is serious about preaching and living the Gospel of free grace in Jesus Christ must leave the Anglican denomination. At the very least, the CofE must be disestablished because state and religion must be separate in a free society — as the Hussites first realised.

Mor Vir

7th April 2020 at 12:53 pm

Admittedly I am being nosey but do you adhere to a Scottish Presbyterian belief/ church? I assumed that you were probably RC because you favour Indy, but I assumed that someone else on here was Prot because he opposed Indy and he turned out to be RC. It is clearly more complicated up there than we might think. Religion and politics are not about each other any more. If only NI could sort out the sectarianism too.

Mor Vir

OK, interesting. It certainly fits with what Paul wrote. Faith alone, Bible alone, grace alone. TULIP. I do not know how anyone can read the Bible and come to arminianist conclusions.

But you know that I am going to tease you about that supralapsarianism, personal predestination to heaven or to hell even prior to the original fall. Do not even try to dress Christianity up as ‘forgiving’, ‘loving’, ‘cuddly’ or any of that stuff. It is ruthless and merciless.

God created the cosmos in order to send almost everyone screaming into hell fire to be tortured forever, to show his ‘justice’, and to ‘save’ a small elite to worship him forever to show his ‘mercy’, and all to his ‘glory’.

That is why I liken God to an omnipotent Ian Brady, not just because of the issues around providence, disasters like pandemics and punishment. It is the most egocentric cosmology imaginable, basically S & M. God tortures almost everyone forever and has a few on their knees worshipping him for his satisfaction, and he deliberately designed it all to achieve that outcome.

It is the De Sade God. It suggests that the ‘higher’, religion, actually has its roots in the ‘lower’, in rampant male sexual desire. It is the ‘will to power’ personified as God. Christianity is actually a perverse se xual fantasy disguised.

Danny Rees

7th April 2020 at 1:53 am

Huh these Christians would have got away with it if they’d have been Muslim.